It's been a while since I made an update. Things are progressing, though not as fast I thought. What's the saying, any progress is a step forward? Something like that anyway, lol. I've had time to reflect on this build so here are some updates and ideas I've had.I've pulled my current 8.8 rearend out of the car and i was going to rebuild it and swap the gears but a local shop quoted me around $400 to do the labor and I can't see spending that kind of money on a rearend I have to modify in the future. So what I decided to do is try to find a SN95 8.8 rearend which would allow me to run rear disc brakes so now the search begins for one. Since I'm going to end up going disc brake all the way around I have to pull the old MC and booster back out. I have a SN95 booster and MC on standby waiting to go back in.

I've made some progress lately. I finally got around to installing the SN95 booster, or at least prepping it to fit, and let me tell you it ain't as easy as all that. It requires modifiying the stud holes in both the firewall and pedal cluster and also "rolling in" the drivers side strut tower. There is no clearance for it to fit in a foureye fox otherwise, it's too bloody big! I wasn't comfortable rolling in the strut tower but I didn't have a choice. I think it will be fine, I just have a tendancy to get paranoid sometimes. Here are a few pictures of the install, it took a long time and so many trial fits that I lost count. My patience was for sure tested on this one but from what I read it will be so worth it. The crease I had to put in the strut tower:

I didn't paint the cross member yet but it will be soon once I get more paint. I got the brake booster and master cylinder out of my parts car and boy was it a pain in the rear. I swear they make them not to come out. It must have taken about 45 minutes to get the hard to reach one out since the dash was still in there. Putting it back in was much easier. The pedal cluster was pretty much a rusted mud ball so I had to clean it up and swap all the parts over before the booster could be reattached. The positive side is I got a gas pedal now, YEAH! Here is a picture of the freshly painted brake booster when installed. Yea, I know, It's got paint all over the lid and stuff but it beats getting paint in the cylinder itself. As it is it had a bunch of muck in it but it was still better than the original one, that thing looked like the rusted hull of the titanic.

I had to jump to the underside and get it done because I had a new can of undercoating I bought and didn't want it going bad. This is one of those times you really wish you had a rack to turn the car upside down. I spent about a week or so under the car cleaning and about 2 days painting. That sucked. For the most part I'm done, I just have the fender sections and some touch up to get and then it's finished. A friend of mine let me use his undercoating spray gun but that stuff got all over the place, even where I didn't want it, and I ended up using a brush for the corners and a small foam roller for everything else. It turned out pretty good, and I like the texture.

It's been a while since I've updated this and for that I'm sorry, my bad. I wanted to wait until I had enough worth posting about but the progress has been so slow it wasn't worth posting up. The progress has been slow and so has the gathering of parts. My new goal was to get it done by this summer but thanks to fate my new, new goal is next summer. Since I never really posted up a picture of the bay since it has been repainted I figure I'll do that now.

It's time to update the progress, which isn't much, lol. It's been to cold this winter to work in the garage but it's warming up! God, I hate this state. Well, so far a little more has been stripped out, but I don't have any pictures of it. I do have a few goodies to show though.FIrst up is a little something I picked up at our big, once a year swap meet, which from what I've heard is the largest in the NW:

The day she came come, little did we know how much work she would need. Ready to come off the trailer and break my garage. My middle son pulling a "Dukes Of Hazzard" after we get it off the trailer. This is a side shot of the passengers side before we pulled anything out, including the 2" of mud and other things I wont mention out. This is a shot of the rear after we pulled most of the mud and "stuff" out, I would hate to see whats behind the panels. After turning a hose loose in there to get all the crap out.

Interesting story about the clutch quadrant. As some of you have maybe read I had problems with the rear control box supports from UPR and guess what? I had problems with the freaking quadrant too. You wouldn't think it would be too much trouble but guess again. It came with about 4 washers and no instructions. Your thinking "why does he need instructions?" aren't you. Well, I've never put one on before and I wanted to know the sequence of the washers, so there. I looked up there instructions on the web and wouldn't you know it doesn't say what to do with them, oh great. I end up on MM's site and I get the general idea from them on what's going on. I head back out in the garage to put them on and low and behold the quadrant doesn't fit on the bloody pedal cluster! By this time I'm seeing red and cursing UPR up and down wishing they would fall off the face of the earth. Calming down for a bit I ended up having to use a mallet to get it on and it shaved a thin layer of aluminum off in the process. Well, it fits now.I was so displeased with UPR's products I actually wrote them an e-mail telling them Id never use their products again and what their stuff resembled was cheap Chinese junk. I wasn't really expecting any reply back and in today's world where you get crappy customer service everyday why should I. Well I did get a reply back, and after talking with them on the phone I was quite pleased with the customer service I recieved. First the gentleman I talked to was very sorry and kept apologizing up and down. He also told me they were in the process of revamping instructions to make them clearer and also quadrant must have been a part of a bad batch of 100 they had that must have been sent out, all bored out the wrong size. As an apology and a way to correct the wrong with the box supports and quadrant he is sending me a gift certificate for their products. If I didn't want that he would find something else to make it right. Now, I'm not saying they make great stuff and I'm not saying they make bad stuff, what I am saying is I recieved great customer service, and I got treated how a customer should be treated. Kudo's to UPR for that one. It's nice to know that good customer service is still alive in some places. Take note places like Wendy's and Best Buy. Right now I'm in the process of cleaning the engine bay again for it's second paint job. Stay tuned for details. I got the bay cleaned and primed, I should be able to paint in the next couple days.

I can't wait to finish this up though, I actually miss doing the bodywork, lol.I just got done undercoating the front inner fenderwells and painting the K-member. I have some touch up to do but not a bad job overall.

It looks strange sitting in the garage with no rear suspension in it. I pulled out the rear control arms and cleaned them up and painted them, then I installed new poly bushings in them. I'm just waiting for the new rearend and new hardware before I slap them in. Speaking of the bushings, I picked up a brand new kit from someone on craigslist for $50 (a $200 kit mind you) because he didn't have the car anymore and a couple of the bushings were packed wrong. My hats off to energy suspension because I called them and told them what was wrong and they shipped me out the correct ones immediately, no questions asked. They also sent me a free tube of their install lube, can't beat that.While I had the suspension out I decided to put in a rear control box support kit from UPR. I don't plan on putting a lot of torque on the rearend but you never can be too sure and it's just easier to do while everythings out. Let me tell you, the instructions that came with the kit sucked. It looked like it was copied 50 thousand times and as helpful as the back of a cereal box, so they were pretty usless. I tried to leave feedback on it on the UPR website but it wouldn't let me, I wonder why. Anyways, here are some pictures of the install:

Even though I ain't proud of it I'll show you some photos of the fender while I was test fitting. The fender itself was way more "bent out of shape" than I first thought. The support for the rear of the fender was bent way out and I ended up working it back in place and tac welding in, what a pain. I knew from having to bend it back and stuff it would be a little off, what surprised me was how out of line the whole fender was. It looks like I'm going to have to ream out some of the mounting holes so I can manuver it around more:

The day she came come, little did we know how much work she would need. Ready to come off the trailer and break my garage. My middle son pulling a "Dukes Of Hazzard" after we get it off the trailer. This is a side shot of the passengers side before we pulled anything out, including the 2" of mud and other things I wont mention out. This is a shot of the rear after we pulled most of the mud and "stuff" out, I would hate to see whats behind the panels. After turning a hose loose in there to get all the crap out.

10 points to anyone who can guess what it is without reading further and cheating, lol. I have been debating for a while now on which to go with, a 302 HO or a 351w. A friend ended up talking me into going with a 302 because of ease, just stick it in and go sort of speak. So we went to this swap meet which was HUGE by the way, it took us about 2 hours to cover like half the front parking lot, and this meet was in the parking lots (2 of them) and about 5 buildings. We ended up only seeing about 2/3's of the whole thing just cause we were so beat. The biggest downside to the show is it was pretty much dominated by Chevy, sigh. What a drag for us Ford guys though they did have a few nice Mustangs sitting there waiting for me to drool over them.So we get there and I pretty much decided to go with a 302, we get about 1 1/2 hours into walking around, don't see much but a few blocks for around $150-$200 and out of shear luck I come across a older complete engine which is what I was after in the first place. My buddy and I check it out and come to find out it's a 351w out of a 71-72 truck. I was like WOW! My buddy checks it over while I hop on my phone to check with my other friend who was at the swap meet next door to see if he came across anything else to concider. With him not finding anything I asked the man how much he wanted for it. He replied with $75, and I said SOLD!!! I guess I know which way i'm going now, huh. The condition of me taking it for $75 was I had to take the metal rolling bin with it and I said not a problem. It turned out to be a Godsend since we ended up having to roll the engine clear across the swap meet.After buying a cherry picker with folding legs for $75 (score!) which is one of only two that we could find in the whole freeking place we spent the next hour or two trying to get it loaded since the line was miles long.

You know, you figure you spend about $100 on this kit you would at least have good, clear instructions. Go figure. I can't wait to try and install the quadrant kit I got from them, yee ha. Not the best pictures I know, but I was very frustrated at the time. I ended up bolting and welding them in place. Overkill I know, but I was not about to take a chance and have it break. The upper plates had to be heated up and pounded into form because they were so far off. I welded those too and also cut off the tops of the bolts and spot weled them on so they don't back off.Next on the list was fixing the bad smash on the passengers side. the dent was so bad I had to make a relief cut in the back sheetmetal to get it to pop out some:

In the areas where you can see the marker marks I have to finess it in or out. Time to see if my tac welds will hold, lol. I had to redo the sheetmetal under the battery tray, big surprise right. I ended up not only redoing under the tray but the side wall mounts as well. They were so bad you could have blown on them and knocked them out.I don't have any before pictures of the rotted out stuff but here is a few with it cut out and repaired. The metal was so thin I kept burning through it no matter how low I had the temp set too.

I also got done redoing the front control arms. I have new SN95 style ball joints, which were supposed to be MOOG's but the person I got them from either didn't know they weren't MOOG or he flatout lied to me. You gotta love ebay. Sometime down the road I'll switch these out for MOOG but in the meantime I'll run these, I have to get the car done. I also installed Energy Suspension poly bushings which were a pain in the rear to install. I can't feel my arm anymore, lol. I also threw on a fresh coat of hammered black paint, the same stuff I used on the K-member.

The day she came come, little did we know how much work she would need. Ready to come off the trailer and break my garage. My middle son pulling a "Dukes Of Hazzard" after we get it off the trailer. This is a side shot of the passengers side before we pulled anything out, including the 2" of mud and other things I wont mention out. This is a shot of the rear after we pulled most of the mud and "stuff" out, I would hate to see whats behind the panels. After turning a hose loose in there to get all the crap out.

We get everything home and my buddy Jeremy (FEP In2fords) who came up all the way from the Oregon coast just for the meet and to help me out couldn't wait to start tearing it apart, didn't matter it was about 7pm and getting dark, lol. Can't you tell from the big-ass grin on his face, lol. As a side note, Jeremy and all the guys on FEP have been a really big help but it was Jeremy who gave me the motivation to get the project rolling again, thanks man!

I just had to throw this in here. My littlest just loves to help out. Everytime I come out to work on the car he has to come too. He saw me working on the pedal cluster and felt he had to as well. I'm still not sure if him helping me is a good thing or a bad thing. I love having him around but it takes me twice a long to do things.

I then welded in a patch from the back side (and that sucked due to the cramped space) and started pulling the rest of the dent out. Keep in mind I'm not a professional, I'm just a poor soul learning as I go. I realize it would have been better to cut out the rear and drivers side quarter panel and weld in new ones but quite frankly I'm not that talented and I probably would have screwed it up worse. And for those who are thinking I should have taken it to a shop go ahead and paypal me the funds and I'll be glad to do it. ; )I used a harbor frieght stud welder and puller to pull the dent out. It's not a bad tool and well worth the money, especially for the areas I have to use it since there is no back access. My only complaints about it is if you use it a lot it overheats, and the puller "grab wheel" strips out really easy. I already had to pull the tool apart once to refile the grooves.